Mobile Banking and Davos

February 1st, 2010

“I know first-hand in Kenya, where farmers have seen their income grow by as much as 30% since they started using mobile banking technology and one World Bank study found that a typical developing country, a 10% increase in the penetration rate for mobile phones led to an almost 1% increase in per capita GDP. Put this into context, that would for India translate into almost $10Billion a year.”

Hillary Clinton, Sec of State

The quote from Hillary came out last week so I am expecting a growing awareness of the potential of mobile banking among the Davos crowd. That being said it is not a topic of any Davos session except for a private workgroup on Thursday. I have found last night at the opening reception and the technology awards dinner a growing acknowledgement that mobile banking has potential in emerging markets.

The opening reception was packed. Mingling was easy since it was so crowded people were physically too close not to talk to one another. The group is truly international and eclectic combination of roles; civil society leaders, politicians, business leaders, academics, top journalist, technologist, non-profit leaders. The first time attendees aren’t exactly sure what to expect, the return attendees are glad to be back and enthusiastic about the week.

The technology pioneers awards dinner was attended by corporates that fund the program and the technology pioneers. The picture above I took of our table at the awards dinner. Each business was very interesting. Except for the Twitter CEO, the CEO’s I spoke to discussed their recent fundraising challenges. Most were involved in long cycles to raise money – but acknowledged that they also needed to find short term approaches to their business that required less capital. Fundraising is always an entrepreneur’s challenge – but in 2009 it was especially painful.

The sponsors of the technology pioneers awards were interesting. I sat with the Chief Scientist from BT. He made it clear that BT knows that they need to look outside of their corporation for innovation. He saw this program as a way to have innovation insights and select companies to partner with. I was struck by the fact that innovation and research has changed dramatically from the old Bell Labs, IBM research phase. Then the big companies saw innovation coming from within, and funded it heavily. Now companies know the world is changing quickly and that some of the most valuable innovations will come from outside their companies and their current business models.

Busy day ahead, first session is the Growing Influence of Social Networks. I am going to get there early to make sure I get a seat. I wasn’t able to get a place at the Rise of Asia dinner.

Less time to blog now, so I expect this will get shorter and less refined but I will try to blog at least once a day. Will also be tweeting (carolrealini).